


Grey World

by DITaran



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Back in 2007, Other, Post Coma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 13:33:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1430332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DITaran/pseuds/DITaran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Upon waking up in 2007 Sam has troubles remembering why he wanted to wake up so badly.<br/>2007 is nothing like 1973. 2007 is not home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grey World

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! 
> 
> How lovely of you to drop in today. Please store your luggage under your seat, sit down and ensure you're wearing your seatbelt throughout the entirety of your stay.  
> I present to you my first "Life on Mars" fanfiction.  
> Comments and reviews would be greatly appreciated. 
> 
> Love & hugs,  
> Taran

# Grey World

 

For some 1973 is the year of a beginning.

For some 1973 is the year of the end. 

For some 1973 is the year of their birth. 

For some 1973 is the year they died. 

For some 1973 is the year they met someone. 

For some 1973 is the year they lost someone. 

For some 1973 is the year they got something. 

For some 1973 is the year they lost something. 

For some 1973 is just a year in the calendar. 

For some 1973 is just random numbers.

For some 1973 is just another year they learn about in history class. 

For some 1973 is another chance.

For D.C.I. Sam Tyler 1973 was almost perfect. There he had felt alive. 

 

When he wakes up in 2007, more than thirty years later, he can’t recall why he had wanted to go back home so desperately. Everyone would agree it’s logical wanting to return to your life, your only life- the only life he’s ever had. But deep inside Sam knows that this isn’t the reason. He didn’t belong in 1973. A lie, of course, and not even a good one. Shame on you, Dorothy. 

Between pursuits in Gene’s Ford Cortina and shouting “You’re nicked!” he had found that he really did like it there. Gene had been right and Sam will be damned if he ever lets him know. It’d only go to the guv’s head, and he’d have to admit being wrong: business he’d rather not do. Being a pansy as the guv would say he isn’t afraid to admit it to himself: he misses them. Even Ray. He tries to push these feelings into the furthest, darkest corner of his mind which in another world had been home to the Test Card Girl. Sam fears, with good reason, she might appear again to torment him at night when light is replaced by dark and its henchmen- the ever moving, deceiving shadows. She’s the reason he fights sleep when it quietly comes crawling through the slit under the closed door like deadly smoke. 

He doesn’t want to lose control over his consciousness again; he tightens his grip around it when sleep tries to yank it out of his hands. Giving up means to lose, to resign to it and Sam’s always been a fighter, against all odds, even if it meant to be on his own with no one having his back. 

 

Recovering from coma, he realises soon, isn’t done with a click of your fingers. They tell him he’s been gone for almost two months. He hears them talk; he eavesdrops on two nurses chattering about how he’d been given minimal chances of survival and when they come to check on him he pretends to be asleep. 

It takes him nine days till he finally manages to stay awake for longer than three hours. His mind keeps drifting off back to the guv and the rest of the team, to Annie. 

He doesn’t want to be here in 2007, not anymore. But he’s got to. This is his life, not 1973! 1973 was an illusion, nothing but images made up by his mind. 1973 wasn’t real. Some days Sam even manages to believes that. He doesn’t tell a soul about his… dream? Time travel? There’s no one he could tell. The doctors would think he’s cracked and lock him up in the psychiatric ward with Tony. His mum… no, he couldn’t tell her. She’d worry and ask him to consult a doctor, one of those white coats.  
His windowless room is white too: the walls are painted in this stainless, bright colour. There are no pictures, nothing, just white. The lights on the ceiling shine cold, and white, never flickering, always steadily humming their dull tune. The bed sheets are made of white, soft fabric. There’s no colour, no life in his room. Sometimes he wishes, almost wishes for a nice gruesome, bloody murder to take place in this room. For blood to be sprayed all over the walls like in those overrated Hollywood films that use fake blood in one single shot to the same extent an artist uses paint throughout his entire life. 

People come to visit him. They never stay long. Life in 2007 is a busy and hectic one.  
Sam remains silent during most of those visits. Oh, he greets them, of course, but often he can’t force himself to pay attention to their words for long. They talk about their life and about what they did together with him before… you know, before you got yourself landed in here, mate!  
They treat him like he’s made of glass and it makes Sam sick. Fucking hell, he won’t break. He won’t shatter into thousand pieces. He’s been Gene’s DI, and he won’t break. It’s what he tells himself at night. He won’t break. A breeze of wind, a question about what he experienced during his coma, won’t throw him off his feet. A teasing comment won’t dissolve him into a pitiful puddle of tears. He’s angry. So angry. He’d like to take some bastard and shove him against the wall until he’ll be able to hear bones crack! Shove the bastard until blood’s smeared over the wall! Until his shirt is soaked with blood and until guts are spilled over the floor! He won’t break. He wants to set the building on fire to feel the warmth, the heat of the flames licking his skin. He won’t shatter. He’ll be… fine.  
That’s why he’s woken up from coma and talking around the matter won’t help anyone, not them and not him. His silence unsettles some of his visitors, his friends (although this title belongs to the A Division in 1973), his family and his colleagues. They’re all different to the people he left two months ago. While he’d been momentarily out of order like a vending machine no one was certain where to kick to get the selected product, they got on with their lives and they did so quite well without him. They don’t need him, not really. The thought’s supposed to hurt, it should squeeze his heart until it stops beating, but it doesn’t. Not when they bid him good-bye and not when they stop coming altogether, it never hurts.  
Some of them try to make him talk, but he doesn’t have anything to say to them. He can’t tell them about his life because he left in back in 1973, he left it there in a tunnel with his heart and his mind. He can’t tell any of them how he feels because he hasn’t felt a thing since he woke up. Not even relief. Cold runs through his veins instead of warm blood. The pictures before his eyes are grey, lacking life and colour. He’s numb. He feels like he’s lost his soul in that tunnel. 

The only time he truly feels anything is in his dreams. In his dreams he can see them and the train. He can hear their cries and screams, them shouting his name, the laughter of the masked men, the gunshots. But they can’t see him. And he can’t help them. He’s just a passive onlooker, unable to interfere, only to watch. There’s nothing he can do but feeling nauseous as their blood soaks the ground, turning it into a red, muddy mess. And each gunshot ringing out, each bullet hitting them feels like hot iron diving deep into his heart, over and over again. 

 

They tell him to take things slowly, those white coats, as they (finally) release him from hospital. But Sam’s a police officer. Taking things slowly isn’t part of his vocabulary. Much to his discomfort he finds the docs were right- he’s not what he used to be. Even climbing a set of stairs leaves him panting for breath and sweating with exhaustion. Inhaling too deeply nearly sends him to the ground like a well-aimed punch from Gene Hunt himself. His hands are shaking as if he’s on cold turkey, especially at the end of the day and they’re cold, covered in a thin layer of sweat. He notices them trembling when he’s holding a pen or shaving. At work he hides those tremors by clenching his hands to fists, behaviour that makes his colleagues keep more than the usual distance in conversations with him, or hides them in the pockets of his trousers, which makes him look far too casual for a D.C.I.  
He’s, to put it mildly, surprised when he finds the spot as head of C Division still to be his. The faces under his charge haven’t changed, although Maya’s request for a transfer has been accepted during his absence, and he has trouble remembering the names of some of them.  
When he solves a simple case only by putting certain things into search in the virtual database he jumps up from his chair and kisses his computer in joy. He can’t help but to overhear conversations between his officers in which they call him ‘mental’ and ‘eccentric’. A smile flashes across his face as he hears it the first time. 

2007 isn’t that different to 1973. 

He’s wrong. It is. Gene’s interrogation methods seem to have rubbed off onto him and it should scare him that only the soft headshake of his D.I. to his right prevents him from reaching over the table and from grabbing the bastard aka suspect of his latest case by the collar. He can’t lean over the table. He can’t yell at the suspect, can’t slam him into the walls, he can’t even threaten him. Fuck that camera recording what’s going on inside the interrogation room. They don’t have enough evidence, nothing to turn the man in for. Sam thinks, he knows, the bastard’s a child rapist. He wants to hurt him, to break his hand slamming a telephone onto his hand until he confesses. But he can’t even glance at the suspect or his head will roll.  
Sam wishes for the semi-dark, the dust and the chaos of the Lost & Found Room on days like this. He wishes for Gene who’d let him get the freaking truth out of the suspect and turn a blind-eye to his procedures, there’s no doubt he’d even join in in them. Gene’s a sheriff and Sam’s been his deputy, always by his side and loyal to defend him even if he disobeys and puts up a fight whenever he thinks it needs to be done. The Lost & Found Room means thick walls, security and 1973.  
In 2007 there’s no dust, no cigarette smoke lingering in the air and no pleasantly yellow light. 

2007 is cold and artificial. 

Sam orders his D.I. to continue the interview, knowing he will do as told. A wry laugh crosses Sam’s lips. Puppy. 

2007 is hell. 

He walks down the hallways. The walls are painted in white. White is the colour of his nightmares. The walls are his enemies. They’ll get him, they’ll catch up with him and they’ll finish him. They come closer, so damn close and he can’t breathe, can’t move, and can’t scream.  
She, the girl in the red dress and the clown hold at an awkward angle in her hands, appears in these moments. Test Card Girl teases him, calls his name, reaches her tiny hand out to touch him! 

The screen of the television in his flat is broken because of her. Precautious measure only. A chair did the job. Sharp glass shards are still scattered around the television. Sam can’t bring himself to pick them up, even if that means walking around his flat wearing shoes. The television is one of the few things reminding him of 1973, reminding him of those nights filled with desperation and madness, reminding him of that fact that he wanted to come back.  
It takes him several moments to figure out that the black, plastic thing resembling a police radio is actually the remote of the television. An image flickers over the broken screen of the television, a scream escapes Sam’s pale lips and he throws the remote right at it. His hands are shaking and he’s gasping for breath. Cold shivers run down his spine. He doesn’t sleep that night. 

2007 holds nothing for him. 

At night Test Card Girl appears out of nowhere, climbing out of Sam’s mind, humming in a dull melody. Asking him to return, telling him she’s his only friend and some days Sam even believes her. He has no one here in this decade, this century. Work ends unpredictable and his colleagues have, unlike him, something worth looking forward to at the end of the day. A cold empty flat awaits him. He tries to socialise, to get along with people and he fails. Work and private life are two different things in 2007. For Sam those two are one; 1973 did really rub off on him.  
He doesn’t sleep well and Test Card Girl isn’t a good help in that matter. His fridge remains empty, but Sam can’t convince himself to go to get groceries. Why should he? He’s not hungry.  
He feels sick when he visits his mum and she tells him how thin he is, that he should eat more and that she’ll go make him a sandwich- ham and cheese, Sammy? Your favourite? You just sit down, I’ll get you cuppa too, one sugar?  
Eating is a dreadful necessity for the living. Sam doesn’t like it. When he’s on his own he can’t bring himself to eat, but for his mum he does and even manages to smile as she brings him a sandwich and a cuppa.  
He doesn’t feel hunger anymore and when his stomach requests food he ignores it, only eats when he feels like fainting. Test Card Girl mocks him about it, questions why he needs a fridge, a kitchen when there’s never food. Scotch and tea are the only things he has in his flat. Some mornings he’s knackered, but then he remembers Gene words about drinking and becoming D.C.I. and he pulls himself together because he’s not a sissy.  
He can still see the blood splattered across his kitchen floor, the dark, not yet dried blood of a supposedly murder victim. It’s not a rare occurrence that he sees 2007 and 1973 overlap. A slap across his face normally helps with that. 

Test Card Girl is the one telling him about the odd looks his colleagues shoot him behind his back when he’s not paying attention to them. They think he’s cracked. Test Card Girl is his only friend. She’s there when he can’t bear the unknowingness any longer and simply has to look them up. He has to know if they were, are, real or just part of his imagination, result of his coma. Test Card Girl is almost comforting as he finds them in old files in the archive. Dead. All of them. Annie, Gene, Chris and Ray. The files slip his suddenly numb fingers. They’re alive. He knows they are. They must be. There’s no way they’re dead. A cold, iron hand squeezes his heart painfully. They’ve got to be alive. He stands there frozen, hands still as if he’s holding something, gaze staring into nothingness, mouth open. It must be some sort of mistake. The files must lie. He tries to ignore the voice in the back of his head which is saying even back then files didn’t lie about the death of a police officer or someone else, they did rarely. Four times can’t be a mistake. An entire team wiped out. His fingernails dig deep into his palms. He shakes his head softly at first, violent the next second. He’s dreaming, just dreaming. He needs to wake up. Wake up, he tells himself. Wake up! He hits his head against the next best wall. Pain shoots through his body, but he’s still sleeping. The files are lying on the floor, casting nasty, sly glances at him. He can hear their voices. They’re accusing him. He can hear their voices and the hatred, the hurt in them, the disappointment. It’s his fault they’re dead.  
WAKE UP, SAM. WAKE UP!  
He holds out his hands in defence as she appears. He wants her to leave, to disappear. She only takes a step closer to him and offers him her hand, a small smile on her thin lips.  
“Come home with me, Sam,” she says and he knows she means 1973. He laughs wryly, tears running down his face. He can’t stay. They need him at that train track. He can’t just leg it. He’s not a coward. The next moment he’s holding Test Card Girl’s soft hand. An electric spark jumps over from her onto him. It’s the spark of life, something that’s been missing ever since he woke up. Maybe it’s time to go home. His eyes fall onto the files. Hot, burning determination spreads through his body like cancer, fast and unstoppable. He’s not a coward. Test Card Girl’s smile broadens. 

He can’t give up. No one would understand. As he splashes cold water into his face at work in the bathroom he finds that he doesn’t care. Not really if he’s honest. The world is grey. His clothes are grey, black suits, white shirts and blue tie. He misses his leather jacket. They say clothing defines you but he doesn’t care, he just doesn’t care anymore. He looks up into the mirror. The expression in his eyes makes his stumble backwards. Blank and dead. But in the left corner of his eyes he sees madness, pure madness. He’s not mad. 

2007 is a cage. 

All rules and regulations are nothing more than restrictions. Sam wants his freedom back, that kind of freedom that was only to the guv’s taking. He leaves the door of his flat unlocked just in case Gene will shoulder it open like he did in another time. But Gene Hunt never comes and orders him to get dressed, telling him they’ve got a case. 

2007 is a waking nightmare. 

Sam knows it’s totally unreasonable, lunatic as he records what he experienced through his coma for his psychological evaluation. He leaves out several things though. Test Card Girl is one of them. She’s watching him intently from the side with that knowing, piercing gaze of hers as he speaks into the recorder.  
“Am I not part of your world?” she asks softly and sounds hurt, tilting her head slightly, clutching her clown tighter in the same fashion you’d hold someone you’re about to strangle. Sam swallows heavily and blinks rapidly maybe then she’ll go away. But she stays, doesn’t vanish into thin air. Sam’s voice is hoarse and rough as he answers quietly “Of course. But you’re part of my world. No one else’s. You’re my only friend.”  
Test Card Girl runs up to him and puts her arm around his waist. Sam winces. It feels like he’s just sold his soul. He’s a nutcase.  
“I’m you’re only friend, Sam,” she repeats his words and disappears as Sam hands the recorder over to some lady. 

2007 gives him headaches. 

At first he’s afraid to tell his mum about the promise he made to Annie. He doesn’t want her to think that he’s losing it, when in truth, he’s already lost it. But then the words leave his mouth before he can consider not telling her. And for once he’s glad his mouth doesn’t always obey his mind. She’s his mum. She needs to know. He needs her to understand and somehow he needs her approval. Test Card Girl waits outside of his mum’s house as he steps out of the front door. His mum doesn’t cry, not yet. He could see the tears in her eyes as he bid her good-bye. For selfish reasons he’s glad she didn’t cry in front of him. He can’t- won’t ever be able to stand his mum crying. She needs to be happy. She’s his mum after all.  
“Ready?” Test Card Girl asks. 

2007 is feeling-free zone. 

He’s uncertain how to do it. Going back to them. There’s no way he’ll wait for another car to run him over. He wants to stay in 1973. His gaze drifts over the faces of the other officers participating in the meeting. He doesn’t know what it’s about. But it doesn’t matter. And then suddenly they’re all looking at him. Test Card Girl too. She seems rather wistful as she nodes her head in the general direction of the door. It’s time to go.  
His hand is bleeding. He doesn’t know where the knife in his hand comes from and it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he can’t feel anything, no dull pain, nothing. He should be able to feel something! Anything! Leaving the room he searches for his pulse on his right wrist. Nothing. He can’t be alive if he can’t feel. What’s the point in living if he can’t? 

His lungs are burning as he runs up the stairs leading up to the roof. There’s no one in the corridors and he’s glad about it. His determination might waver if he would. It can’t- it shouldn’t. He needs to get back to them. They need him. For God’s sake, he needs them! He needs Annie’s understanding nature, Gene’s occasional punches and teasing comments, Chris’ admiration and Ray’s antagonistic behaviour. 

The sky is blue, almost cloudless, and the sun is shining. Perfect weather. He throws a glance back to the stairs. No one there. On the other edge of the roof Test Card Girl is waiting for him, one of her hands outstretched to him. She’s his only friend and she’ll take him to them. He’s certain she will. He starts running, slow first and then faster and faster. He can’t go back. He can’t stand the grey life here. He can’t stand it. He won’t go back. There’s no one, no Annie, to stop him from jumping this time. He’ll be with them. The edge is coming closer, faster than he could say “Piss off!” His feet are hardly making a sound as they hit the roof. He’s flying. Free like a bird. 

There’s no doubt in Sam’s mind as his feet leave the roof behind. 

Test Card Girl takes his hand. 

He’s falling. 

He’s not afraid. 

He’s back in the tunnel before he hits the pavement. 

If you die in your dreams you wake up just before you can hit the ground, they say. 

2007 was just a reoccurring dream. 

He’s home.


End file.
